Chapter 51: Nightmare 4
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 51: Nightmare 4
I didn't even know their names.
I didn't know where they lived.
I didn't even know where they had gone to meet the priest.
"If only I had asked yesterday... would things have been different?"
I loathed myself.
I denied my own existence.
Because I had sought to abandon my very soul, the Clown trait was slowly devouring me.
Step, step, step, step.
There was only one way for someone who didn't even know their names to find them: scouring the entirety of the Back Alley.
The Back Alley was too vast to search alone, so I went around questioning everyone I saw.
"Do you know where the children are?"
My tone was polite and formal.
My actions were anything but.
I seized passersby, slamming them against the walls as I interrogated them. I asked countless people, but no one knew anything about the children. To those struggling just to survive another day, concern for others was a luxury they couldn't afford.
Step, step—step—step, step.
"Ha... haaa..."
My pace slowed. My breath grew ragged.
Hours had passed since I began my search, but my body refused to stop.
It was then that a voice drifted from behind me.
"Masked... Oppa..."
It was a familiar voice. A voice that had always offered thanks with a bright, innocent smile.
I whipped my head toward the sound.
There stood the girl. A massive hole had been pierced through her chest, and she was staggering toward me. I rushed to her instantly, gathering her cold, broken body into my arms.
Just as I was about to ask what had happened—
"Uuuggghhh."
Someone was approaching, emitting a strange, guttural groan.
Sensing the thick, metallic scent of blood, my body acted on instinct. I drew my sword.
Shring.
"N-no... you can't."
The girl used every ounce of her remaining strength to block my sword hand. I didn't understand why.
"Uuuggghhh."
But as the source of the noise stumbled into view, the reason became agonizingly clear.
Clatter.
The sword slipped from my hand, falling pathetically to the ground.
"Ah..."
The boy was walking toward us, his eyes vacant and hollow.
The sword he usually carried was drenched in blood. The worn blade he had once brandished to protect his sister was the very thing that had run her through.
I couldn't feel a single spark of life from him. He was already dead.
There are those in this world who move the dead. Necromancers.
Usually, the puppets controlled by Necromancers were made of bone; skeletons were easier to manipulate. But the boy was different. On the outside, he looked like a living person—a corpse with flesh still attached.
There was only one Necromancer who favored such a technique.
"Mordor!!"
My very soul screamed the name of the Necromancer who had desecrated the boy.
A Necromancer’s criteria for choosing a corpse are usually simple: the stronger the body, the greater the power. But Mordor explicitly targeted the corpses of weak children.
He did it purely for his own amusement.
My hands trembled as I pulled the girl closer. That meticulous bastard would never have let her escape by accident. For his sick entertainment—to watch a brother murder his sister—he had let her crawl away on purpose.
The girl opened her lips as she watched me tremble, helpless to save her.
"Masked Oppa, please... kill us..."
"What...?"
"If we stay like this... I'll only end up dying by my brother's hand."
"...Why would you die..."
The girl's body was growing colder by the second.
If there were a priest nearby, she could be saved. But this was the Back Alley. If I had a potion, she could be saved. But I had nothing.
"Oppa, you pretended like you didn't have a dream, but I knew. You wanted to be a knight who protects people."
Blood sprayed from her mouth with every word.
"If you leave my brother like this, he'll... he'll kill others."
The warmth was fading.
"If I die like this, my brother will spend eternity in heaven grieving, thinking he was the one who killed me."
The girl squeezed out the last of her strength to utter her final plea.
"So, Masked Oppa, I beg of you. Please... kill us."
In my hand was the dagger I had bought as a gift for the boy.
The girl's breathing grew shallower, as if urging me to make a decision before it was too late. I pulled a cloak from my Pocket Dimension, spread it on the ground, and carefully laid her down.
Tremble.
With shaking hands, I pressed the dagger against the girl's heart.
Pshk.
The blade pierced her chest.
I told myself I had to do it quickly to end her suffering, but my heart screamed at me to stop.
"...Cough."
I flinched. At the sound of her pain, I plunged the blade deep into her heart.
"I promise... I will kill the one who did this to you."
".................."
There was no answer.
With hands still trembling, I raised my sword and looked at the boy walking toward me.
"Ha... haaa..."
I watched myself despairing.
Even though I knew I couldn't escape the nightmare, I tried everything to break free. But in the end, I couldn't. I was helpless. I was so utterly, miserably helpless.
Both the 'me' in the dream and the 'me' in reality were powerless.
After that day, I had the same nightmare every night.
At first, I thought I was cursed. But Duke Adelian told me there was no curse on me.
I was so pathetic that I used medicine to avoid the nightmare. I was so weak that I used Yerika to turn away from it.
'I don't know anything about your trauma. I know you have no intention of telling me. But you will never get better by taking medicine. To truly escape a nightmare, you must eventually accept it yourself.'
Duke Adelian said that my own subconscious was the one creating the nightmare. He said that most people who have such dreams do so because they want to change reality, even if only in their sleep.
'Then why can't I do anything?'
If the dream existed to change reality, why was I unable to move? Why was I unable to speak, forced only to watch the tragedy unfold?
'Ah.'
I realized why I was powerless in the nightmare.
This wasn't a nightmare born from a desire to change the past.
'This is a punishment I am inflicting on myself.'
It was a penalty my subconscious imposed on the pathetic version of me that had failed to act. There was only one way to escape this punishment: accepting reality.
If I accepted reality, the nightmares would stop.
'Accept reality?'
Accept the reality where children died because of my stupidity? Where I had to kill them with my own hands?
I could never accept that.
No, I refused to accept it. I will never acknowledge their deaths.
Those children had dreams. Children whose dreams were for the sake of others... I cannot accept their end.
Even if I have to use medicine to flee the nightmare. Even if I have to listen to Yerika's voice to drown it out. Even if I have to suffer the nightmare again because both are gone.
I will never accept reality.
.
.
.
.
Johanna followed Loki.
Since he was sprinting across the rooftops, tracking him wasn't difficult.
Bang!
Loki kicked in the door of a shop. Seeing this, Johanna descended from the roof and followed him inside.
The shop reeked of stale alcohol. Despite the presence of quite a few patrons, the room was deathly silent.
'Where is Loki?'
Johanna scanned the room. Finding him was easy; everyone in the shop was staring at him in terror.
"Information Guild. Give me the information."
Loki was hoisting someone up by the collar. Men who looked like hardened mercenaries were trembling under the suffocating killing intent Loki was radiating.
'An Information Guild? Here?'
She knew of them. A guild said to possess every secret in the world. But no one knew who its members were or where they operated.
"Customer, this isn't an Information Guild, it's just an ordinary tav—"
"If you don't spit out the information right now, I will broadcast the location and membership of the Information Guild to the entire Empire—no, the entire continent."
Loki cut the employee off mid-sentence.
Thump, thump.
"That's enough."
An old man sitting in the corner of the tavern stood up and walked over.
"I am the 33rd Eye. I don't know what information you're looking for, but to be this reckless..."
"Garam. That's your name. I won't make this long. Give me the information now."
Thud.
Loki spoke as he slammed a heavy pouch of gold coins onto the table.
The old man froze, shocked that Loki knew his name. He was shocked once more by the sheer amount of gold Loki had produced.
"Hmm, for this much money..."
But he didn't let his surprise show. Seeing how easily the man produced such wealth, he thought he might be able to squeeze out even more.
"Don't push it."
"..........!"
That thought vanished the instant the man spoke.
From the moment he had entered the tavern, the man had been radiating killing intent. The combatants hired by the Information Guild were shaking because of it. The old man had assumed the man was intentionally projecting it to intimidate them.
He was wrong.
The killing intent he had felt until now was just the man's natural aura.
But for a split second just now, the man had directed true killing intent toward him. This man could kill him right now. The only reason he hadn't was simply because he needed information.
Cold sweat poured down the old man's face.
"What information do you require?"
He bowed his head.